Lets Botanize – Ben Goulet – Scott Jacob S Suissa (1)

ABOVE: This Tillandsia absorbs water directly into its leaves, not just through the roots, which enables it to drink condensed moisture right out of the air. ABOVE: Some epiphytic plants, like this staghorn fern (Platycerium), grow into basketlike shapes that catch falling leaves and other debris, creating their own composting soil factories in the canopy!

ABOVE: In the temperate region, epiphytes are more likely to be mosses, lichens, and liverworts. This scalewort (Frullania) is a type of liverwort. ABOVE: An epiphytic orchid has long roots that can absorb water that collects on the bark or in the crotches of a tree. Can you find a flower that does not produce petals?

Whether we are plucking them off to determine if someone loves us or sprinkling them on the table for a fancy dinner after we realize they do, petals are the most recognizable parts of a flower. In many flowering plants, petals are large, showy, and colorful structures that aid in attracting pollinators like bees, butterflies, and birds. However, not all flowering plants use animals for pollination. Many use the wind to move pollen from flower to flower. When a plant evolves to do this, they tend to lose their petals over evolutionary time.

Why invest in showy petals if they are not trying to attract animal pollinators? Petals are costly—they are large, pigment-filled structures that tend to use large amounts of water and nutrients. This evolutionary reduction has happened multiple times across the flowering plant tree of life including in the oaks, birches, and sycamores. Instead, wind-pollinated plants tend to invest in copious amounts of pollen and large, feathery stigmas. This is because wind pollination is very inefficient. What are the odds that a pollen grain 6,000 times smaller than a grain of rice will land on a flower a mile away?

ABOVE: Mountain witch-alder (Fothergilla major) has a cluster of small, petalless flowers with showy stamens. ABOVE: Rose-gold pussy willow (Salix gracilistyla) also has a cluster of small petalless flowers. Both Fothergilla and Salix are visited by insects even though they don’t have petals.

We’re a community of doers who love to grow, build, create, and explore the world around us. We invite you to join us in the quest to enrich life through hands-on activities and experiences. STOREY’S FRESH PICKS MONTHLY EBOOK SPECIALS OceanofPDF.com OceanofPDF.com The mission of Storey Publishing is to serve our customers by publishing practical information that encourages personal independence in harmony with the environment. Edited by Hannah Fries Art direction and book design by Carolyn Eckert Cover photography by © Let’s Botanize, Inc.

except David Clode/Unsplash, front; Rlevse/CC BY-SA 3.0/Wikimedia Commons, back m. Interior photography by © Let’s Botanize, Inc. Additional Interior photography credits appear on page 239. Illustrations by © Nina Chakrabarti Text © 2026 by Let’s Botanize, Inc. All rights reserved. Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the authors’ intellectual property.

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The Storey Publishing name and logo are registered trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc. ISBNs: 978-1-63586-904-0 (paperback); 978-1-63586-905-7 (ebook) LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA ON FILE OceanofPDF.com For curious, sharp-eyed Sora —Ben To Ned, whose indefatigable curiosity for plants is a beacon that I continue to follow —Jacob OceanofPDF.com Contents What’s Botanizing?

The 5 Tenets of Botanizing Parts 1 Look closely at the patterns of leaf veins of two different species. 2 Cut open two fruits and compare their contents. 3 Find a bud at the tip of a branch.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 748b587c4217c2e7
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 62,257,756 bytes (59.374 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• ISBN: 9781635869040, 9781635869057
• Pages: 385
• Language: English (en)

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• Estimated Reading Time: 190.16 minutes
• Total Words: 38,032
• Total Characters: 234,930
• Average Words per Page: 98.78
• Average Characters per Page: 610.21

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